New Haven began demolishing a fence on Monday that for 50 years separated a public housing complex in the city from the town of Hamden. For some, the fence had become a symbol of racial and economic division between two communities.

As WSHU has been reporting in its "State of Disparity" series, Connecticut has one of the widest gaps between the wealthy and the poor in the country. A report out this week by researchers at Harvard and U.C. Berkeley found the chance that someone in the bottom fifth of the economic ladder in Connecticut could rise to the top fifth is about 8%. For some young low-income people, even the bottom rung of that ladder feels out of reach.